Hearing devices are to provide as natural a hearing perception as possible to hearing-impaired patients and are primarily to largely compensate for medically specific functional interferences in the auditory organs. In this way, allowance is increasingly made for comfort requirements. The object of a hearing device is to convert acoustic pressure into an auditory sensation of the hearing device wearer, which would also occur in the case of physiologically and anatomically intact auditory organs. The hearing devices must thus be able to be adjusted to numerous subjective and objective conditions. These conditions relate to the individual details of the defective hearing in each instance, the selectivity of the perception of a hearing device wearer but also changing auditory situations and/or environmental influences, which may affect a hearing device wearer. Modern hearing devices are generally able to set a plurality of parameters, which influence the transmission and amplification characteristics of the respectively used hearing device. The setting of these parameters is firstly carried out by the manufacturer in the form of a basic setting, which can then be adjusted on the patient in the form of a fine tuning in one or several sessions with a hearing device acoustician. A fine tuning of this type is however associated with significant effort for the patient on the one hand but also for the responsible hearing device acoustician on the other hand, which is frequently perceived by the patient as inconvenient. Hearing devices have thus been established, upon which at least one part of the adjustment and/or fine tuning of the hearing device can be performed independently of a hearing device acoustician, which is preferably carried out by the hearing device wearer him/herself with the aid of a remote controller for instance.
An effective adjustment to an actual auditory situation, particularly in the case of comfortable hearing devices, is however frequently associated with an adjustment of numerous technical parameters, which sometimes places great demands on the technical knowledge of the hearing device wearer, knowledge that is potentially not provided in the case of a layman. As a result, there is the risk of a maladjustment of the hearing device, which can no longer be overcome by the hearing device wearer him/herself, since the identification of optimal settings can prove to be too difficult. Alternatively, the hearing device wearer must then employ a hearing device acoustician again.
The claimed problem notably applies if the individual variable parameters simultaneously form the input variables of complex signal processing algorithms, which in turn influence the transmission and amplification characteristics of the hearing device. Algorithms of this type can be realized for instance to suppress interference noises or to highlight desired acoustic sources in the hearing devices. Examples of this are algorithms for setting the directional characteristics, algorithms for attenuating non-speech parts, for rapid spectral interference noise estimation, for wind noise suppression and many others. The number of setting options automatically increases the risk of maladjustments. This applies particularly if the individually variable parameters do not completely influence the transmission and amplification characteristics of the hearing device independently of one another and/or if ambiguities appear. These ambiguities, in which the subjective impression can be conveyed that different settings or parameter combinations result in apparently identical transmission and amplification characteristics, significantly complicate a reproducible setting of a hearing device. The risk of maladjustments increases further if the hearing device wearer is unable to acoustically perceive the effect of a variable parameter and/or an adjustment of the same, which can result for instance from distinctive features of his/her individual defective hearing. This problem also applies in particular to the use of complex signal processing algorithms with variable parameters as input variables.
It is known to reduce the risk of multi-dimensional maladjustments such that an actual auditory situation is classified, thereby enabling the subsequent assignment of the classified auditory situation to several stored data sets with preset parameters. The selection of the parameter set (EP 0 814 634 B1) which is best suited to a respective auditory situation then takes place interactively in this case. This procedure nevertheless requires the storage of a relatively large number of data records with preset parameters, in order to be able to perform a fine selection of the suitable parameter set and furthermore presupposes the ability of the hearing device wearer to acoustically evaluate differences between the stored settings and to make a qualified selection.
It is also known, based on stored preset parameters and a classification of a certain auditory situation, to offer preset parameter sets which are automatically varied once they have been deselected by the hearing device wearer in the preadjustment offered (EP 1 453 356 A2). A purposeful optimization is also only possible in this case, if the hearing device wearer is able to acoustically perceive and evaluate the effect of varied parameters. Furthermore, a procedure of this type is at least partially related to the predictability of auditory situations which arise, and can thus not completely replace the free setting of parameters and/or signal processing algorithms.